Japan’s Ninjas Heading for Extinction

byJames FurbushonDecember 5, 2012

If Ninjas went extinct would anyone know they went extinct? Ponder that for a moment. Anyway, Japan still has a few surviving ninjas (which is insane when you think about it) — masters of the dark arts of espionage and silent assassination — but it is believed when they die off there will be no more ninjas.

Here are a few things I learned from the BBC’s report:

Ninjas had day jobs, because, as Jinichi Kawakami, Japan’s last ninja grandmaster and engineer by day, says, “you can’t make a living being a ninja.”

Plus, ninjas have no place in today’s world. “In the age of civil wars or during the Edo period, ninjas’ abilities to spy and kill, or mix medicine may have been useful,” Kawakami says. “But we now have guns, the internet and much better medicines, so the art of ninjutsu has no place in the modern age.”

They technically could walk on water through the use of water shoes.

Using a sword was considered a lower art by ninjas and only used as a last resort

At the height of the ninja, there were 49 different clans that could be hired by noble samurai warriors.

So, to recap, guns, the Internet, and modern medicine have made ninjas irrelevant. Speaking of ninjas, have you guys watched ‘American Ninja’ with Michael Dudikoff? Might be a good time to revisit that piece of ridiculousness.